Youth health bill is wildly off-target for 21st century

There should be a sign at the entrance to the General Assembly building telling those who enter to set their watches back 60 years.

Quite a few of the people working within are living in the 1950s, as demonstrated when the House Health and Human Services Committee passed a bill effectively cutting off many health services to the teenagers who need it most.

The bill would require teenagers to get a notarized parental consent in order to access sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, mental health counseling, pregnancy care or substance abuse treatment.

"It is, frankly, a list that is stunning in its breadth, scope and obliviousness to the realities of the modern world," said Rob Schofield of N.C. Policy Watch.

Rep. Chris Whitmire, a Republican from Rosman and the bill's lead sponsor, said the law would cut down on repeated problems by getting parents involved. "This bill addresses situations that often time reflect behaviors that led to it in many ways," he said.

Other sponsors include Reps. Michele Presnell, of Burnsville and Nathan Ramsey, of Fairview, both Republicans.

"While making provisions for judicial bypass and federal exceptions, this bill reinforces the long-standing presumption that fit parents act in the best interests of their children," said Jere Royall of the N.C. Family Policy Council.

In what galaxy do these people live? In this galaxy, we do not have a society in which all children live in two-parent households with open lines of communication. We never did, not even in the Ozzie and Harriett era.

Here are some sobering numbers from the real world, courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Half of all high school students have had sexual relations. More than 9 million new STD cases are reported each year among teenagers and young adults. More than 400,000 teenage girls gave birth in 2009.

The National Center for Children in Poverty says that one in five adolescents has a mental health disorder. Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among teenagers and young adults. One of the reasons for lack of treatment is the confidentiality issue, NCCP said.

The children who most need help frequently do not have supportive parents who will help them through crises. In many case, the crisis is caused by the parents abusing the child.

Doctors and health care advocates argued against the bill in the committee hearing. "Here's the bottom line: Everybody wants teenagers to talk to their parents, but public policy is not based on ideal families," Paige Johnson of Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina told the committee.

"What if there's something happening in the home, some kind of abuse going on? If teenagers can't talk to their parents for whatever reason about their pregnancy or their STD or their substance abuse, they need to be able to access professional care."

Others argued that the bill will prevent teenagers from seeking help for life-threatening situations. "The concern is they're going to suffer, and not only suffer but transmit problems in the future," said John Rusher, a Raleigh pediatrician and head of the N.C. Pediatric Society.

If the law passes, North Carolina will be the only state in the union to force teenagers to get parental consent for STD services, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

If there's a formula for a bill purportedly designed to improve the health of youth while actually making things worse, it would be hard to find a better model than this move.

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Youth health bill is wildly off-target for 21st century

There should be a sign at the entrance to the General Assembly building telling those who enter to set their watches back 60 years.